Despite the recent rockiness in American-Israeli relations, particularly over the Iran nuclear deal, Sen. Cory Booker [NJ], just back from a Senate Democratic mission to Israel and other countries, said he is convinced the bond remains strong. New Jersey’s junior senator was one of eight legislators on the Jan. 3-9 trip led by New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand.

“I left Israel with a sense of gratitude from Israelis for the work going on in the region between our two countries and respect for Israel’s own capabilities, and a deep commitment to use my capabilities every day to take aggressive responses to any threats Israel has, particularly from Iran,” Booker told NJJN in a Jan. 15 phone interview.

Op-Ed: The anti-Israel trend you’ve never heard of

By David Bernstein (David Bernstein is president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the representative voice of the Jewish community relations movement.)

David Bernstein. President & CEO – the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Credit: @DavidLBernstein

January 4, 2016

NEW YORK (JTA) — If you want to understand why the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS, has gained so much ground in the past two years, look no further than intersectionality, the study of related systems of oppression.

Intersectionality holds that various forms of oppression — racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia — constitute an intersecting system of oppression. In this worldview, a transcendent white, male, heterosexual power structure keeps down marginalized groups. Uniting oppressed groups, the theory goes, strengthens them against the dominant power structure.

As you might have guessed, the BDS movement has successfully injected the anti-Israel cause into these intersecting forms of oppression and itself into the interlocking communities of people who hold by them. So it’s increasingly likely that if a group sees itself as oppressed, it will see Israel as part of the dominant power structure doing the oppressing and Palestinians as fellow victims. That oppressed group will be susceptible to joining forces with the BDS movement.

“What we have found at Al Aqsa is a steady stream of calls for jihad and martyrdom, venomous attacks on Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims, and praise for al Qaeda, Islamic State, or ISIS, and other jihadist groups.”

A Mosque as Extremist Megaphone

Even in leading Islamic institutions like Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, praising Islamist radicalism is common.

By Steven Stalinsky. Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri).

February 3, 2016 print edition

President Obama on Wednesday will visit a U.S. mosque for the first time in his presidency. According to the White House, during this visit he will “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.” Over the past two years, in the president’s efforts to counter violent extremism, he has emphasized the responsibility of Muslim “scholars and clerics” to help ensure that mosques are not used as a platform to preach Islamist extremism.

Such extremism isn’t limited to out-of-the-way mosques where radical clerics operate in the shadows. It is occurring in mainstream and leading mosques world-wide, including at one of the most important religious institutions in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Continue reading →

An Open Letter to JK Rowling

Like millions of people around the world, I’d like to thank you for bringing the magic of Harry Potter into our home. We’ve thrown Harry Potter birthday parties, sewn countless Harry Potter Purim costumes and even – the night before our son’s eleventh birthday – forged an acceptance letter to Hogwarts for him in green ink. You created a world where everyone has the choice to be great.

Now you’ve chosen to stand up for what’s right in a different context – to defend Israel from those who would boycott her – and I’d like to extend a huge thank you.

Aquanos’ trick is to use algae to provide oxygen for the germs breaking down our waste to breathe, rather than break the bank pumping in the gas.

By Ruth Schuster and Noah Phillips

October 19, 2015

Only 10% of people on Earth have access to safe water, says the Water Organization, a nonprofit headquartered in Chennai, India.

That means 90% may have to drink foul water, at a vast cost to their health. One obstacle to resolving the problem is that two key technologies, wastewater treatment and desalination, are very expensive, and very heavy on energy use.

Now an Israeli company [Aquanos] says it has a low-cost, energy-positive solution, notably appropriate for the capital-poor developing world – merely by adding aquatic weeds to the equation.